Every year Visions du Réel organises masterclasses, meetings and debates that are open to the general public and professionals alike. In addition to its three 2024 Guests – Jia Zhang-Ke, Alice Diop and John Wilson – the Festival will host discussions with renowned filmmakers such as Claire Denis, Petra Costa and Anna Hints, as well as many directors whose films will be screened publicly for the first time, plus film funders from all over the world, such as Sundance Film Institute, CNC, Chicken & Egg, Points North Institute, The Whickers Foundation and more).
MASTERCLASSES AND EVENTS FEATURING 2024 GUESTS
The masterclasses represent free opportunities for the Festival audience to take a deep dive into the work of the guest filmmakers and interact with them, in a context conducive to understanding their cinematographic career and approach.
Saturday 13 April, 2 – 5 pm, Alice Diop
French, with simultaneous translation into English and French Sign Language. In partnership with HEAD-Genève. Théâtre de Marens, moderated by Anita Hugi, Head of Cinema at HEAD–Genève (University of Arts and Design) and Mourad-Anis Moussa, member of the selection committee and co-head of the programming office at Visions du Réel.
Monday, 15 April, 8.15 pm: Guest of Honour Ceremony, Jia Zhang-Ke
Théâtre de Marens, with a homage paid by French filmmaker Claire Denis.
Tuesday 16 April, 2 – 5 pm, Jia Zhang-Ke
Mandarin Chinese, with simultaneous interpretation into English and French. In partnership with the Cinémathèque Suisse and the ECAL, with the complicity of Fondazione Prada. Théâtre de Marens, moderated by film critic, journalist and professor Jean-Michel Frodon
Thursday 18 April, 6 – 8 pm, John Wilson
English-language, with simultaneous translation into French. Usine à Gaz 2, moderated by Emmanuel Chicon and Anne Delseth, members of the selection committee at Visions du Réel.
MORNING TALKS (IN ENGLISH)
These seminars invite filmmakers who are part of the official programme to discuss contemporary cinema, its opportunities and challenges based on topical issues. They take place every morning (10 – 11.30 am) at Musée du Léman, from Sunday 14 April to Thursday 18 April and are open to professionals and the general audience of the Festival.
Sunday 14.04 – Un-centering the author
“Non-fiction filmmakers are, first and foremost, strangers who burst into the lives of their future protagonists with a question, an enigma, a concern… or, more prosaically, a camera,” organiers write. “It’s often a question of putting oneself in another’s shoes, while finding one’s own perspective and acknowledging the audience’s, so that the most vital encounters become genuine sharing experiences. Whether the film finally takes the shape of an essay, a chronicle or any other form, how does this astonishing alchemy, which consists in creating a common ground through the act of un-centering, really work?”
Guest directors: Ben Donateo and Michel Passos Zylberberg – Muzungu; Samira El Mouzghibati – Les Miennes; Jean-Baptiste Bonnet – Save Our Souls, Vadim Jendreyko – The Song Of Others; Sophie Benoot – Apple Cider Vinegar. Moderated by Aurélien Marsais, member of the selection committee.
Monday 15.04 – Did you say hybrid? Staging reality
“From the start, close links have always existed between documentary and fiction, or between fiction and documentary, as demonstrated by the work of Jia Zhang-Ke, to cite just one recent example: direct staging techniques and ‘actorial’ work using amateur actors on the one hand and non-actors, hand-held cameras or natural light on the other, mixing genres represents the norm, at least since the emergence of cinema’s new waves,” the festival writes. “Why then should this distinction remain, when all the while boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred? In practice, how do contemporary filmmakers switch between “fictional” mise-en-scène (so called because of its relationship to the imaginary) and “documentary” mise-en-scène (so called because it is filmed on the fly)?”
Guest directors: Stefanie Schroeder and Emerson Culurgioni – La Duna; Orkhan Aghazadeh – The Return of the Projectionist; Pauline Jeanbourquin – Feu Feu Feu; Virpi Suutari – Once Upon a Time in a Fores; Narges Kalhor – Shahid. Moderated by Anne Delseth, member of the selection committee.
Tuesday 16.04 – Choosing a filmmaking apparatus
“Since the early 2000s, the term ‘filmmaking apparatus’ has been used to describe a range of practices aimed at constructing a reality while it is being recorded,” organisers write. “These techniques reveal the filmmakers’ positions and raise a number of questions: what are the advantages and limitations of filming alone or as part of a team? What are the different ways of interacting with the person being filmed? How do you stage the spoken word, the body or the intimate? Is it possible to anticipate reality by writing a screenplay that leaves room for the unexpected and unpredictable? Why does one choose a filmmaking apparatus or device over another when one sets out to film reality?”
Guest directors: Federico Luis Tachella – How to Be Pehuén Pedre; Nicolás Suárez – The Eucalyptus; Adrián Orr – To Our Friends; Ruaidhri Ryan – Previs; Cesar Alejandro Jaimes and Juan Pablo Polanco Carranza – Carropasajero. Moderated by Mourad-Anis Moussa, member of the selection committee.
Wednesday 17.04 – The war of narratives: documentary realities and media ‘truths’
“Documentary filmmakers are direct witnesses to the conflicts multiplying worldwide and are increasingly caught up in their own representation, which is in turn being swallowed up by the images being propagated worldwide on social media,” the festival writes. “The latter’s ‘anonymity’ sometimes reveals what would otherwise remain invisible but, more often than not, lends itself to all kinds of manipulation. If immediacy and its corollary, media noise, are now today’s ‘truth, how can cinema continue to develop critical counter-narratives capable of resisting the (viral) powers of falsehood?”
Guest directors: Brett Story – Union; Laurence Lévesque – Okurimono; Elahe Esmaili – A Move; Daniel Mann – Under A Blue Sun; Ado Hasanović – My Father’s Diary. Moderated by Emmanuel Chicon, member of the selection committee.
Thursday 18.04 – Shooting and editing: the moment a film is born
“Occasionally, chance meets the intuitive sensitivity of a photographer who captures a moment, all of which comes together to create a ‘poetic accident. But time is a very different concept for a filmmaker than it is for a photographer,” the festival writes. “In cinema, shoots often stretch out intermittently over several months, as rushes and takes accumulate into a mass of recorded moments in need of melting down and moulding into a coherent narrative. But for this last talk, we would like to ask participants about any of their own examples of such ‘poetic accidents’ during a shoot as well as the moments, in the editing room, when it becomes intuitively apparent that they have found the film they were looking for.”
Guest directors: Myriam El Hajj – Diaries From Lebanon; Farah Kassem – We Are Inside; Lawrence Côté-Collins – Billy, Nelson Makengo – Rising up at Night; Aliaksandr Tsymbaliuk – Koka. Moderated by Alice Riva, member of the selection committee.
INDUSTRY TALKS (IN ENGLISH)
Dedicated to the industry professionals, Industry Talks offer “an astute overview of the cinematographic production field.” To launch the 2024 Industry program on Sunday 14 April, Visions du Réel will host an intimate and personal In-Conversation with the multi-award-winning, Academy-Award-nominated Brazilian director/producer Petra Costa (Elena, Olmo and the Seagull, The Edge of Democracy), presented by SRG SSR. In this intimate talk, Costa will explore, in dialogue with Violeta Bava, the impacts of interweaving her family life and her political obsessions into her cinema, drawing on past and future projects to explore everything from family relationships to the current state of financing in the industry. Because of the sensitive nature of the conversation, this session will be closed to the media.
The state of the documentary industry will be further explored with a new series of industry talks spanning four days, exploring how, in a time of financial contraction from traditional financiers such as streamers and broadcasters, filmmakers can find new and innovative funding opportunities.
Furthermore, over a series of five talks, industry professionals are provided an opportunity to engage in a conversation with film funders from all over the world including: Bruni Burres, (Sundance Film Institute, USA), Isabel Arrate Fernandez, (IDFA-Bertha Fund, The Netherlands), Lisa Kleiner Chanoff (Catapult Film Fund, USA), Milton Guillén (Points North Institute, USA), Khalil Benkirane (Doha Film Institute, Qatar), Jane Mote (The Whickers Foundation, UK), Sabine Fayoux Cantillo (Chicken & Egg, USA), Amanda Clarke (Minderoo Foundation, Australia), Fabienne Hanclot (CNC, France), Madeline Robert (visions sud est, Switzerland), Corinna Marschall (Media Desk, Switzerland) and Patrizia Pesko (Federal Office of Culture, Switzerland).
Additionally, in a time of environmental crisis, Visions du Réel is addressing sustainability head-on in the session Going Green, which draws on international experts and local case studies to explore best-practice for creating a more environmentally-minded film practice. Special guests include Nina Hauser (Austrian Films) and Linn Rott (Evergreen Prisma/LAFC) nominee for Best Sustainability Initiative at the 2023 Global Production Awards, as well as Swiss filmmaker Tobias Luchsinger (The Value of Things, 2024). This session is moderated by Sereina Gabathuler (Green Consultant, Roundabout Film) and presented by Austrian Film.
To celebrate the 2024 European Film Awards taking place in Lucerne next December, Visions du Réel is collaborating with the European Film Academy and SWISS FILMS to close the industry program with a thought-provoking panel titled Change In Europe: Filmmaking as a Tool of Liberation. With guests that include 2023 European Film Award-winner Anna Hints (Best Documentary Award, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood) and established Swiss-producer/director and Vision du Réel alumnusFrank Matter (Parallel Lives, Visions du Réel, 2021), this discussion will be moderated by the Artistic Director of the Tampere Film Festival, Jukka-Pekka Laakso.
